Answers to Keep
by YellowTangerines
Summary: It doesn't take eye abilities to explore the human emotion of friendship, but for the Beta kids and Mekakushi Dan, they make everything better. Homestuck crossover with Kagerou Project, no Sburb, no trolls. /Story 7 of Mekakustuck / Current act: Intermission
1. Japery

**Answers to Keep**

Oh, the things insomnia let you plan on your third day of being in Japan. The things staying home let you do.

John and Kano sat grinning, sandwiched in a sea of the exact same person. They were two of many in a bucktoothed mob, focusing on Con Air's climax and not the kitchen covered in popcorn. They were a pair in a blue hoodie flood that filled the living room and halls around it, made of…How many doppelgangers, again? About sixteen including Kano, maybe? John lost count about an hour ago. Did he ever know how many selves there'd be, even while planning this prank on a cool nighttime city walk at three in the morning? Perhaps he did. Perhaps not. Perhaps it'd be better to just watch Con Air and stop thinking about it.

They heard chatter burble from below the windows, popping at the walls behind them. A rhythm of footsteps with no rests in between played beneath the audio on the TV. Plastic, shuffling plastic and keys that just wouldn't fit in the locks. John and Kano could feel the excitement in their veins.

The handle on the door turned downwards, revealing rainbows of hoodies and heights. "We're home!" sang the same old call – until it cut off. The rest of the Beta kids and Mekakushi Dan scanned unpopped kernels, a crowd on the couch, an upturned kitchen. They looked up, looked down. This was not the base when they left it for a shopping trip and a couple of missions.

No one wanted to say anything.

Time and space stopped moving, and even when the trickster and deceiver returned the call with "Welcome home!" all words fell on deaf ears. Kido's eyes were narrowed in barely concealed rage. The Betas and Shintaro had faces of tired dread, as in why-didn't-we-see-this-coming. Everyone else was painted with upshot eyebrows and dropped jaws, little nuances that didn't know what they wanted to be in reaction to all those Johns in front of them. But for all the different expressions in eyes and on faces, everyone knew in their silence that this was not normal. There were not supposed to be this many Johns in one apartment, or at all. Not normal.

The dialogue and soundtrack flowed on in the TV screen, until Kido swiped the remote from on the couch and paused the movie. "Whatever you guys were planning here," she shouted," it's over now and you're never doing it again. Now, which one of you is Kano? Reveal yourself!" The commander put up a fist. All but one moved.

The remaining Johns watched the deceiver stunned and sprawled out on the couch, blinking out of existence without any warning needed. The one trickster who truly belonged to the current moment, slumped over on the floor of his and his friends' room, snapped back to the waking present. He heard Kido shout something about this being against the rules from behind the muffled walls. He also heard an uncomfortable silence that hung in the air, and then footsteps of everyone disbanding.

Operation Johnference was over.

* * *

-midnightDeceiver [MD] began pestering ghostyTrickster [GT]-

MD: hey~!

GT: kano?  
GT: you do not need to pester me, you know.  
GT: we're staying in the same building together!

MD: that may be true, but...  
MD: you see, I'm not allowed to be anywhere near you right now~

GT: that would explain it!  
GT: so, about that prank.  
GT: we did pretty good.

MD: no kidding~!  
MD: and you doubted me about how well I could prank.

GT: but not anymore!

MD: and that's for sure, right?

GT: of course it is for sure!  
GT: i am not a dirty liar like you are, kano.

MD: that's true~  
MD: aah~, that was fun.  
MD: guess you're never too old to play jokes on people~!

GT: hehe, true.  
GT: i mean, my nanna back at home is a prankster!  
GT: i don't know why we didn't film this.  
GT: she would have loved to see it!

MD: eh?!  
MD: you actually have someone who'd be proud to see you play pranks, John?  
MD: that's really lucky~!  
MD: I can't imagine anyone ever feeling that way whenever I do this kind of thing~  
MD: oh~?  
MD: aah, Kido found me! her face looks so scary~  
MD: she must know we're talking!

GT: haha, time for you to die.  
GT: see you later!

-ghostyTrickster [GT] ceased pestering midnightDeceiver [MD]-

Nanna would have loved to see the Johnference, wouldn't she? The thought lingered in John's head from beyond the sounds of smacks and pained grunts. Who else should have seen that prank that didn't? Someone else in his family, maybe, like…

Though he would definitely be proud, it'd be best if that question was left unanswered.


	2. Rhyme

The summer sun in the Mekakushi Dan's base was hot. The sick fires, just cooling off after being laid down, were hotter. Dave sat around in his and his friends' room, in between headphones and sweet rap battle victory. No one who tried could have beaten him. Those who didn't try and stayed back to play the beats couldn't have, either, but who was counting them? He was a little too pro for the Dan, and maybe a tad too chill when everyone was raging over their losses in silence. Ironic, since rapping was fire. Dave smiled a bit to himself. The more irony, the better.

And the more quiet, the better, but that didn't happen at all. The door slammed into the wall with a _CRASH_ , sparing the door from being ripped to shreds but not Dave's eardrums. He took off his headphones. Looked at who exactly just went and almost killed his hearing. Rolled his eyes, because if Momo was going to ask for yet another rematch he'd do an acrobatic fucking pirouette off the handle and then some.

"Yeah?" Dave grumbled. "If you're going to ask for another chance to try and beat me at a rap battle, you can abscond from this room. Maybe get onto Sputnik's shitty remains and be launched into space, because you were out of the rap battle a long fucking time ago."

"That's not what I'm here for!" Momo snapped.

"Then what are you here for?"

"A question, that's what," she answered, cooling her anger a bit. "Ene-chan transcribed your rap for me, and I put in Google Translate. Now I want to know something!"

"Fire the fuck away."

"Does it have to be ironic?"

Dave's train of thought froze. Does it have to be ironic, she asked. _Does it have to be ironic_.

That was the best joke he'd heard all day.

"What?" Momo asked. "What's wrong with what I asked?"

"Pretty much everything," Dave managed in between bouts of laughter. "I mean, the topics you guys chose for the rap battle were fucking _grocery shopping_ and _crossing the street_. How the fuck do you expect me to play that shit straight?"

"But in our defense, we didn't always pick topics like that! Didn't something like 'loneliness' come up at some point? I don't know about you, but I wouldn't put that subject on the same level as getting groceries for the week."

"So that rap battle was supposed to be a feeling jam in disguise? Well shit, I had no fucking clue." Dave threw up his hands.

"Okay, okay, maybe I asked the wrong question! Here's a better one for you: have you ever written anything unironic?"

Second best joke of the day. The coolkid began to think that Momo should have done stand-up comedy instead of working in the J-Pop industry. "Hell no," he answered. "I mean, I'm a coolkid in case you haven't noticed by now. Why the fuck would I play _anything_ straight? Not only is that shit too low-level for me, it's also just plain fucking wrong. So do you have any actual questions on you or can you leave?"

"I'm not done! Who told you it was wrong, though? It's pretty obvious that you like being ironic, but who ever said it was 'just plain wrong'? What makes you say that, anyways?"

"I was fucking raised on irony. I got low-quality JPEGs saved to my milk formula every night before I went to sleep with my favourite puppet, in which my Bro rapped lullabies off the explicit playlist just 'cause I kept begging him to. And - "

" – don't keep going. Please. Don't." She put a hand up. "So just because you were raised that way, you can't do anything unironically?"

Another stupid question. Clearly the answer was…

But…

Dave's mind was blank, and Momo wasn't such a good comedian anymore. He hashed together some quick metaphor on being cryptic, before thanking the universe that Momo was being called outside. Doors shut and silence returned. Dave thought the question over. _So just because you were raised that way, you can't do anything unironically?_ The answer was a resounding 'no'.

 _Why?_ She'd probably ask that next. This time, the answer was easy. Bro would expect it of him. It was an indisputable fact.

But his friends' guardians, with the exception of Rose's, were the norm and not the exception, weren't they?

Normal caregivers didn't ambush their kid at any given moment, didn't they?

John's dad taught him to play the piano. Jade's grandpa gave her good hugs. Kido, Seto and Kano's adoptive dad played secret agents with them, Marry's mom taught her to read. And what did Bro do, Dave asked himself, that actually made him happy looking back? The sword training, evening strifes on the rooftop - they only made his thoughts recoil. Video games were empty noise, the mind games just plain nightmares. Dave didn't know the last time he saw food, true and edible food, stuffed in the fridge instead of katanas.

So the answer was nothing. Bro did nothing good for Dave. Something in the coolkid's mind soured when he figured it out, as if the mere thought would launch him back into the face of Bro's sword. But it wouldn't. And did that tie him to the standards of a long dead man?

Suppose that the answer was a resounding 'no' again.

That was as obvious as it got. But if Momo expected that Dave would stop going off on big subversive metaphors anytime soon, she had another thing coming. Maybe when he died.


	3. Growth

-woodsySika [WS] began pestering gardenGnostic [GG]-

WS: Hi, Jade!

GG: oh hi seto!  
GG: is the line still not moving in the store?  
GG: its been about a half hour since i arrived back at base to check on marry! :(

WS: I'm sorry to say so, but yeah.  
WS: We're going to be very late.

GG: dont worry about it though!  
GG: marry and i dug up a couple of seeds you guys had in your drawers  
GG: we can probably still plant things today by her cottage! :)

WS: Aah, that's good!  
WS: This line probably won't move in a while, so why don't you go on without us?  
WS: We'll come over when we can!

GG: sounds good to us! :D  
GG: well see you guys there!

-gardenGnostic [GG] ceased pestering woodsySika [WS]-

* * *

The slightest hint of a breeze tickled the leaves above, swirling in and out of every little crack. It played with Jade and Marry's hair as they walked closer to an ivy-scaled cottage in the woods, but left their plastic bags of gardening things alone. Sometimes the wind wasn't anywhere to be felt. Sometimes it was back again with a whistle in the canopy. It was pretty calming, from the first reaches of the trees to deep within the forest.

When the gardening itself began, Jade kept an eye on all that Marry did with her. She watched and intervened when Marry fumbled with the trowel, dug holes too small or too big, forgot to water the planted seed. She was there behind the albino as they worked to sow violets and chrysanthemums.

And together, the girls watched packets run out of seeds. They saw the holes become mounds. Gloves became caked with dirt, the air was filled with sweet forest calm. But as sweet as it was, peace didn't replace people. Jade sighed, wishing the others would show up soon. Maybe with pumpkin seeds. Marry didn't ask to plant anything edible, but she wouldn't object to some nice, orange pumpkins, would she? Jade pulled out her phone.

 _There's some kind of disturbance in the back room, so the wait time's getting even longer_ , wrote Kido.

 _I'm not lying this time when I say this is the only gardening store in the area! If we went elsewhere, it'd be going really far. Well, it can't be helped,_ wrote Kano. Oh really? He wasn't lying? Well, if Kido hadn't backhanded him by now, he had to be telling the truth, sadly enough. Jade frowned.

"Are the others not coming yet?" Marry asked.

"I don't think so," Jade answered. "They said something happened in the back room, and that means we'll be alone for a while."

"Oh," the albino paused. "That's not good. But, anyways, um…Thank you so much for helping me! And, um…if I could ask you something…when did you learn to garden? Was it, was it after you moved in with Nanna? Or before when you lived alone?"

"Before when I lived alone! It's one of the many things I taught myself!"

"You taught yourself? That's pretty cool!"

"Thanks!" Jade laughed.

A bit of silence, save for the breeze swirling around.

Marry's voice dropped a couple ten decibels. "You know, Jade, I used to live alone too. Most of my life was spent in this cottage, reading books and drinking tea. It was really lonely, honestly. Were you lonely?"

Words caught on the edge of the gardener's tongue like a traffic jam. What would she answer with? How would she answer? "Well…not really! I had my friends to talk to on Pesterchum. I met John, Rose and Dave pretty early on. And I had my grandpa, too! Well, when he was alive to visit, that is. Was."

"But, if I don't remember wrong…when you live alone, you have to do a lot of things yourself. When you come to live with others, you can share the load between yourselves! Jade, you organised all the shopping and specifics of our gardening day, and did everything you could to make it happen, right? I'm really grateful for it! And, from what I've heard, you've tried to uplift your friends when they were feeling bad about their eye abilities even if yours was hard to work with too!"

Oh, where was this conversation going? Marry wasn't going to stop there. Jade pulled away from the thought that she would cut the albino off herself.

"Ah, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, aren't I?" Marry finished. "Well, I just wanted to thank you, Jade. And, don't ever feel you have to do something all by yourself. Okay?"

Jade never stopped smiling during all of that, never quit being cheerful. But as the gardener listened to Marry's whispers, watched her pick up a stray, forgotten seed in the grass and plant it in the perfect way Jade taught herself so long ago? The albino had something of a point. She wasn't alone now. That sentence could apply to the both of them, or really anyone. No one was quite alone here.

But suppose that was just another constant in the summer world they lived in.


	4. Fables

For all the use Rose found in her journals, this was probably the noisiest one of all, in addition to most crowded.

She was the only one standing on her side of the coffee table, everyone else clinging to a couch with their eyes straight on her. They were expecting something. Rose had that something, all penned in purple ink on the curled pages of the journal she held against her chest.

"Well, Rose? Show the rest of us what you have in that notebook of yours," said Kido.

"Certainly, but the research I've done in my journals is probably nothing new to any one of you. I don't see how it could be any use. Should I not be standing here?" Rose raised an eyebrow.

"Research? That's not why I called you up here at all," Kido answered. "Since John pulled off his prank with Kano, Dave organised a rap battle between us and Jade took us gardening, these guys begged me to have you put something together as well. I saw your journal in your suitcase, and once I think you said you were a writer. Why don't you read us something you wrote, Rose?"

Something she wrote? The psychoanalyst speed-searched her memory for the last time she wrote fictional worlds onto her papers and not fantastical yet real ones. Months? No, years. Not since the first time one of them made it into the Heat Haze. When _Complacency of the Learned_ surfaced in Rose's mind, she figured it was no more than ash in a stream by now. The author in Rose had to have died in that alcoholic August 15th fire, because the mere thought of stories drew blanks in her head.

But she had to say something, didn't she? Rose cleared her throat. "No, no, you're right about that. It's just…I haven't written anything in a very long time. Once I wrote about a group of wizards and their students, but I didn't bring it here with me. It's probably gone forever. And I can't say I'm quite inspired to create something else."

Ene's voice shot through phone speakers. "Yeah, but why don't you just tell us that old story? We're all waiting for something here!"

"And as for the details you don't remember, we could just make them up ourselves," Seto added. "It's more fun when you have everyone joining in, right?"

"It's not that bad of an idea," said Hibiya.

All eyes on the psychoanalyst.

"All right," said Rose. "So, the story we're having today is known as _Complacency of the Learned_ , and forgive me for being unable to properly translate that title into Japanese. It's about a group of twelve, very wise wizards – the Learned – and their twelve, perhaps less wise disciples. One of these disciples, Calmasis, is on a quest to…well, he's the villain. He's causing a lot of trouble. Now, for the members of the Learned…"

The couch crew caught everything Rose had to say and more.

* * *

Skies darkened, street lights flickered on. Crushed soda cans and water bottles circled the couch, and yet everyone was still there listening to the girl with the journal and the gel pen.

The little notebook open on the table was mostly blank before, save for a couple quarter-filled pages. Now, Rose was squishing her words and fingers together. This new _Complacency of the Learned_ was bigger, seeing as it had 13 writers and not just one.

It ended up being different, too. The grim tale of a genocidal fledgling mage up and vanished when the introductions ended, ensuring the Learned would all live. Calmasis was instead cursing his masters left and right, forcing them into bread-induced hives or ink-borne monsters the size of ancient oak trees. Rose thought it mercy.

The Dan proved great at storytelling as they went from Kido down to Konoha (who Rose usually saw napping and skipped), to the other Betas and back again. Whether it was simple things like the contents of spellbooks – Marry's domain – to entire traps and puzzles, something Shintaro was a bit better at, everything made it into Rose's journal without question. And none of that was going to change, as they neared the end of Zazzerpan and Calmasis's last game of chess.

"Y _ou wouldn't relinquish your chess pieces for the noble wand, my mentor Zazzerpan?_ " Seto offered.

" _I wouldn't, Calmasis, not after what you've done,"_ Marry countered.

" _Are you scared to fight a mere student, teacher?_ " Momo added.

" _Not at all,_ " Ene put in. " _for I am a mage of dignity!"_

"D-dignity…um…" Shintaro cleared his throat. " _Keep your cursed dignity, then. But behold these sights of victory!"_

Hibiya snapped back into focus. "I-it's my turn, um… _The rest of Zazzerpan's pieces go up into flames, as Calmasis captures his teacher's king_ _and calls a checkmate…_ Um, _the board vanishes into thin air!"_

" _But Zazzerpan summons his own wand to counter Calmasis's magic blast that suddenly happened, so now he is safe!_ " John shouted, soon after relieved he didn't wake Konoha up.

"Jade can have my turn," said Dave.

"Thanks, Dave! _Zazzerpan uses a long-lasting sleep spell on Calmasis! 'Your torment of my comrades ends here, student,'_ " Jade finished.

" _Calmasis tries to object, but he falls asleep too quickly_ ," said Kido. " _The curses put on the Learned are undone now, and out of nowhere the freed wizards appear to congratulate Zazzerpan._ _The end."_

The end it was. Rose penned the last words of what Kido said, before closing up the journal with a smile. Her story, once grim and bluntly real, had been made into mere fantasy. Nothing they did today changed the past Routes' gruesome endings.

But maybe that was okay.

 **End of Intermission**

* * *

 _AN: Hello, everyone! I'm finally off hiatus, and glad for it!  
I'm sorry for having taken so long to write this fic - you see, Intermission went through some major planning changes partway through. That, and the fact that I got burnout while trying to write Mekakustuck complicated things. But the fic train is moving again, and what better way to kick off the new year than some fluff/not-as-angsty-character-study with the Beta kids?  
Anyways, as is constant across all timelines, thank you for reading _Answers to Keep _and Mekakustuck as a whole! Comments and criticism will be much appreciated, which is also a timeline constant. ~YellowTangerines_


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